I think he was just playing around lol. It would have been crazy if she was like, "I quickly took his back, sunk my hooks in and secured my right arm underneath his throat and whispered "This is what it feels like to die.""

It takes around 5 minutes of hypoxia, at least in cardiac arrest and stroke cases, to cause brain damage. There are other hypothesized mechanisms by which strangulation (blocking blood flow) may cause injury or death, but the best characterised and seemingly most important is blood flow.

yeah, I imagine he'd have to be squeezing incredibly hard, though. I always thought it took less than a minute, but I remember seeing somewhere that it 's really dependent upon how tightly you hold. variables, and stuff.

When I was a lifeguard (six years or something like that) they told us that brain damage occurred after 1 minute without oxygen with serious brain damage occurring at 3 minutes. Anything beyond that was likely to be fatal or so bad that any reasonable quality of life was no longer possible.

The lesson for us was: catch problems early and rescue quickly. The lesson from this article, if this account is accurate: hold on tight for about the length of a pop song if you want to kill a hit man.